Milk and Cigarettes

Then.
Cigarettes. Only last evening I had promised myself to buy milk,
instead of this despicable poison.
“Enough, no more,” they had heard me say.

Today.
But when the shadows started looming around the margin of the twilight,
I found myself making my way back to that trusted vendor of viles.
His betel-red teeth broke into a smile as he quietly slipped a pack of Gold Flake into my hands.
Money exchanged hands, a tired ritual weighed down by another kind of shame.
Shamefacedly, I looked around the corner to check if someone was looking;
only fellow culprits met my guilty stare and I shuffled my feet left and right
before sending their way one of those fake greetings I had once known, but forgotten.

Now.
In the silence of my own company,
the faces on my wall have started jeering once again.
“We told you so.”
I rubbish them with a peremptory wave of my hand, rudely affirming my own existence.
“I am stronger than you”, and saying so,
I light one up and inhale.
Deeply.
As my scarred lungs soak up the filth and the black tar spreads its tentacles into my veins,
the shadows begin to blur along the edges, while the voices are turned down.
As a smirk peeks around the corner of my lips,
an uneasy peace is brokered between my uninvited guests and I.

“Tomorrow, I will buy milk.”
So renews my dance with myself.